Tagged: education
DOGGIE DINER NEWS New improved!! Be the first on your block…….
Some people take this Doggie Diner stuff pretty damn seriously! Like my buff friend “Caution” Mike Connor.
The Bay Area is all about mixing metaphysics… er metaphors. Here is a great example created by awesome fine & graphics artist Erik Chipchase
1 – HEAD TRIP PUBLIC SCREENING (June 21st North Beach SF)
2 – ONLINE MOVIE RELEASE (late June 2023)
3 – DOGS IN GG PARK (October 2022 – September 2023) (new audio art QRS codes on Dogs in GG Park in June!)
here is the Telegraph Hill Dwellers press release:
HEAD TRIP PUBLIC SCREENING:
SAVOY TIVLOI 1434 GRANT AVE SF
WEDNESDAY JUNE 21ST 7PM
Q&A WITH CO-DIRECTORS John Law & Flecher Fleurdujon AND movie star/protagonist Jarico Reese of SF Cyclecide.
Head Trip is a full length documentary film featuring the Doggie Diner Dogheads on a cross country trip to New York City during “Shock and Awe” 2003. The idea was to spread good cheer cross-country during a tough time. As you will see in the film there was some success. The tour and film were made in collusion with San Francisco’s own punk rock bicycle club Cyclecide with support from Laughing Squid & Christina Harbridge.
Please watch this short trailer for the movie to be found in this wonderful article on the cross country road trip that inspired to movie: https://laughingsquid.com/head-trip-a-doggie-diner-dog-head-cross-country-documentary/We will be re-premiering the full film at Savoy Tivoli on Grant Street in North Beach on Wednesday, June 21st as part of the premier event Films With Friends. Look for the lone 10 foot tall Doggie Diner Head parked out front. The film is a part of a new series sponsored by THOSE GUYS PRESENTS. Brainchild of noted prankster/cineaste/film collector Rob Schmitt, this exciting new series will be taking place in various locations in the BEST NEIGHBORHOOD IN SAN FRANCISCO, NORTH BEACH monthly through the Summer/Fall. more information to come.
Kevin Evans, co-author (along with yours truly & Carrie Galbraith) created dozens of EC Comic style “factoids” for the book.
ONLINE MOVIE RELEASE:
The film was recently spruced up by Suicide Club/Cacophony and Burning Man stalwart filmmaker/composer Steve Mobia using the original mini-dv tape and it looks better than ever! Head Trip has never lived on line ever with the exception of a short trailer on Youtube and various news articles about the road trip and film premier in 2008. Head Trip will be released on SF Cacophony Society Youtube page sometime to be announced after the June 21st public screening.
DOGS IN GG PARK:
https://laughingsquid.com/?s=Doggie+Diner
https://johnwlaw.com/2014/01/20/dog-days/
https://sfist.com/doggie-diner/
Doggie Diner history video youtube
SOME MORE DOG INFO (STUFF ABOUT HEAD TRIP, the movie) :
CD cover for the film Head Trip 2009
Starting back in 2003 my friend Flecher Fleurdujon & I made a feature movie about a journey spanning the breadth of America accompanied by three 10 foot tall 300lb chef’s hat & bowtie adorned dachshund heads and a crew of punk rock bicycle clowns called Cyclecide Bike Rodeo. Completed in 2009, the movie was in a couple of film festivals, played at The Roxie in SF for a week & at two showing of almost 500 folks at Rythmix Cultural Works in Alameda CA. The movie played a few more times, but that was it. It has never been online in all the intervening years.
Well before we embarked on our road trip/movie shoot, the giant grinning heads had been the official mascots of The Cacophony Society and The First Church of the Last Laugh. They were recognized all about the SF Bay Area from their tenure as totemic representatives of a local fast food franchise and our contribution to the Doggie Diner legacy was to deconstructed the former commercial icons and facilitate their “re-christening” as disembodied former commercial icons. By the time we started our film project, we had been hauling the three fiberglas objects all around to various non-commercial, often non-profit, nonsensical events as well as City events and parades of various stripes for years.
I met Flecher Fleurdujon when he was 7 or 8 years old back in 1977. Over the succeeding years Flech evolved into an accomplished musician, band leader and videographer. Loving fruitful collaborative work as I do, I had imagined a project where I could work with my friend. “Flech” was the son of my Suicide Club friend Mary Grauberger. I lived a few blocks from Mary with my roommate (another Mary) Mary Friedman and her kids Ben and Nellie. Flech was the same age, and the three of them were in the Suicide Club as the kid contingent. These three and a few other youngsters routinely accompanied their elders into sewers, abandoned factories and the occasional embarrassing foray into “street theater”. Flech was a great kid filled with energy and creativity.
Some years earlier Mary had inspired two stoner friends with a yearly solstice beach art event she organized starting in the late 70’s where she invited her hippie friends to meet her at Baker Beach, bringing musical instruments, food & art. Oh, she encouraged her peeps to burn some of the art. These two fellows went on to start the first Burning Man also at Baker Beach in 1986
During the early Suicide Club adventures, I carried an eight year old Flech on my back into some pretty sketch environments… 12 years or so later, Flech was my assistant at the second Desert Site Works event at Trego Springs on the Black Rock Desert. Already established as operations guy for the ever growing desert bacchanal, my duties at the annual Burning Man event included transportation, set up & clean up. For the liminal Desert Site Works I assumed the same responsibilities . For the preliminary set up, I desperately needed a helper and asked Mary G if I could conscript Flech.
He and I loaded a 24′ Ryder box truck with a ton of stuff. drove to the proverbial middle of nowhere and dumped all the stuff into a pile next to Trego spring. I had many errands to run and left 17 year old Flech to hold down the site, handing him a Remington Wingmaster Pump action 12ga. shotgun “just in case”.
Ten years later I was sitting in $teven Ra$pa’s lovely apartment on Rincon Hill along with Scott Beale, Helena “Noona” Sullivan, and a half dozen other local event folks and we were planning a Laughing Squid hosted and underwritten NYC event to take place at CBGB’s 313 Art Gallery (affiliated with & next door to the infamous punk club) that would showcase a roster of our SF and NYC underground performers and characters. The session was lively and productive. Then, out of the blue, Noona shouted: “HEY! John! we HAVE TO BRING THE DOGS!!” – like that was a good idea… I literally cringed and shrunk back in my comfy chair, shouting loudly and to the derisive laughter of my associates: “no, No, NO, NO!!!” because I KNEW just how much really dirty heavy work, planning and $ that such a feat would require……. To make a long story short, we made it happen and you can see the results in our movie Head Trip…
I hope that you enjoy the feature movie that Flecher and I made with the help of a cast and crew of hundreds, showcasing The Doggie Diner Dog Heads as they traversed the great American continent to New York City falling into many improbable and serentypical adventures along the way
Thanks to Scott Beale and Laughing Squid for helping produce the original cross country trip the movie is based upon and later help producing and exhibiting the movie on screens in California, NYC & Florida in 2009 & 2010. Thanks to my ex-wife Christina Harbridge for her support during the making of the movie and special thanks also to Cyclecide Bike Rodeo for wrangling the whole shebang and all the heavy lifting…
illustration from Tales of the San Francisco Cacophony Society 2013 Last Gasp SF. Authors/editors Carrie Galbraith, Kevin Evans & John Law
CD cover for the film Head Trip 2009 (page 6)
CD cover for the film Head Trip 2009 (page 7
CD cover for the film Head Trip 2009 (page 8)
CD cover for the film Head Trip 2009 (page 9)
CD cover for the film Head Trip 2009 (page 10)
CD cover for the film Head Trip 2009 (page 5)
San Francisco’s restored Dog Head mounted at the SF Zoo, Sloat and 46th Ave. Restoration by SFDPW, Ed Lee, Mohammed Nuru, Rachael Gordon, Pete Misthos http://doggiediner.com/pages/doggie_saved.html
The Holy Trinity of the dominican Order at The Carousel (formerly Doggie Diner) Ocean Beach SF circa 2001. Art car by Philo Northrup. Photo by Harrod Blank
The Dogs at Chinatown Gate SF photo: Winni Wintermeyer https://www.3am.net
The 1st Church of the Last Laughs Annual St Stupid’s Day Parade
One of dozens of Doggie-Zippy cartoons by Bill Griffith
mini-Dogs by Loid Mongoloid made for the DD Kickstart for the DOG restoration.
New Games
Look for events this JUNE commemorating this important cultural movement.
New Games was a movement started in the late 60’s/early 70’s that encouraged people of all ages to make play a part of their daily lives. New Games was initially inspired by an idea of Stewart Brands, that he, Pat Farrington and George Leonard made into a New Games play weekend that attracted 6000 people. Brand soon moved on and a cadre of games enthusiasts, educators and athletes carried on to spread the idea of noncompetitive, immersive and cooperative games around the US and the world. A book of games collected from the four corners of the Earth and edited by Andrew Fluegleman was compiled and published, soon selling out and seeing multiple reprints and total books published nearing the 1 million mark according to some accounts. Probably best known for the “Earth Ball”, New Games was a pretty big deal in play and education circles by the end of the decade.
By the late 70’s the New Games Foundation was housed in a building on Arguello St in the Inner Sunset. Some of the folks involved would include Burton & Barbara Naiditch, John O’Connell, Todd Strong, Dale LeFevre and others. Suicide Club co-founder Adrienne Burk worked for New Games for a while. I even worked there – slogging out a few weeks working as a “shipping agent” mailing out Earth Balls and boffers (soft foam swords! the perfect way to work out physical aggression without hurting anyone) to schools and individuals around the country. 
I wasn’t very good at the job, I think they felt sorry for me, I was so broke!
I knew most of the folks involved and had great respect for them and their campaign to spread a wonderful idea everywhere they could. Principal trainers Todd Strong and Dale LeFevre were also active Communiversity participants and Suicide Club members. I recall some cool events they created or helped with in the secretive Suicide Club. Todd organized one of the first Rocky Horror Picture Show costumed events at the Strand Theater for the Club in 1977. This was before the idea really caught on with hordes of formerly shy, soon to be assertive goths kids around the world. Dale hosted one of the very first Suicide Club events. He took us to the massive South San Francisco The Industrial City letters which we slid down on pieces of cardboard, just like sledding some huge snow hill. 
The event made a giant impression on all participants and introduced me to the concept of the city as a PLAYGROUND. This is a concept which Gary Warne took to heart in his further experiments in urban adventure and it lay at the core and heart of the Suicide Club. This sense of play adopted by Gary and the rest of in the Club was instrumental in creating the culture that seeped through the later Cacophony Society and on into Cacophony fueled events, movements and organizations that continue to have resonance such as Burning Man, SantaCon (SOME of the original playful spirit of this event must still exist!), the world-wide UE (urban exploration) phenomenon and even a little in the Fight Club inspired underground pugilist groups that sprang up by the hundreds for a season.
A return to New Games including public events and lectures that are in the works for this Summer, specifically on the weekend of June 24-26. So please pencil in that time so you can meet and learn a bit from these awesome folks. Former NG co-Director, trainer, Aikido master and all around New Games guy John O’Connell has started the ‘Earth’ ball rolling and it seems that many of the principals involved back in the heady 70’s will be rolling into town. These are people that had a profound impact on our culture and have continued on in a variety of guises spreading the gospel of play as an intrinsic part of any healthy adult life.
I will post event and presentation dates and specifics as I become aware of them. Please check out New Games. The history is so important – New Games was one of the major influences on the underground culture of free play and underground events that we enjoy today.